the bottlenecked blog

The Past, Present, and Future of Greenville Manufacturing

2012-01-16T14:39:00.001-05:00

I love it when NPR does a story on my hometown. Just this week Planet Money did a two part series on the history of American manufacturing through the lens of Greenville, SC. Here's my version of the story:

The Past

With several forces coming together at the right time, the early days of the Industrial Revolution brought about radical economic change. Work moved from the home to factories in cities, greatly improving human life, wealth, and morality. Which meant the late 1800's and early 1900's saw huge economic growth. These increases in production, and in turn increasing wages, didn't require very much expertise (assembly lines run themselves) and could often be created by a lone genius inventor.

The Present

Then we had The Great Stagnation. The Industrial Revolution picked up all the low-hanging fruit of innovation. Printing press, cheap western land, fossil fuel powered machines, penicillin, clean water, cars, planes, basic worker education, etc. all made life better quickly and relatively easily. Computers, cancer research, alternative forms of energy, college education for all, etc are all slow going and complicated to benefit from. Also, much of the innovation of machinery and globalization of trade has replaced the low skill industrial workers of the past and it's still happening (just check this old and new video of automobile manufacturing).

The Future

If you read the full Planet Money story in the Atlantic the future looks grim. Workers are suffering in the name of profit. The poor try, but can never succeed. The reality is a little more optimistic. Every time a human is replaced by a machine (or even a cheaper human) customers benefit. And since all workers are also customers, even the replaced workers' lives can improve. The unemployed of today probably have better living standards than the employed of the 1910's because of increases in productivity. That's why I support some kinds of social safety nets (especially the kind that retrains replaced workers). I also suggest that when choosing a career be sure you can't be replaced by a machine in your lifetime (hint: don't go into the toy assembling business).

The Distant Future

Though if I did have a worry about how technology impacts society, it would be about fertility. As technology improves, jobs become more complicated. That's why the return on education is actually greater than it used to be, even non-economically speaking (especially if you weren't "supposed to go"). This increase in complexity requires an increase in education. Which is usually fine because increases in education result in increases in pay that exceed the cost of that education. But what I'm specially worried that if jobs become so complicated that they require decades of education, they could delay plans for family past the point of our most fertile years. What if we have to learn so much we can't have babies anymore, increasing the future underpopulation bust? My guess is creating a family while still in school will become a more common trend.

Reader Request: Do Christians Really Believe?

2012-01-15T23:25:00.001-05:00

I always take reader requests. Here's one from blogger and interesting thinker, Justin Wehr:

Here's one I'd like to see you respond to:

They believe that they believe, but their beliefs are of the easily disposable kind. Suppose you could take a devoutly religious person, ask him, “Are the tenets of your religion true?” and somehow convince him that the life of his child depends on getting the answer right. I’m guessing that nine times out of ten, you’d find yourself confronting a born-again infidel. The only reason that rarely happens is that there’s rarely an occasion when getting the right answer actually matters.
Quote from Steven Landsburg that I came across in this post: http://bit.ly/xpn9Dh

Here's what I want to know

Which (if any) tenets of your religion would you hold onto and which (if any) would you discard if your kid's life were on the line?

In your estimate, what percentage of pious people would become, in the above situation, "born again infidels"?

One of the things I noticed on my summer European tour is how global cultural religion is. The American South is famous for religious culture, but it exists everywhere and in every religion. First I'll respond to a specific points made in the post linked above:

If there really is a heavenly and eternal paradise awaiting us after death, one would think more people would be in a rush to get there, right?

I can only speak for Christianity, but the Church mostly agrees that although we long for heaven, we have a mission here on earth. So suicide or a reckless life does not fit with Biblical teachings. Now if the writer had complained that Christians don't live out the second half (the mission part), then that is a legitimate complaint. One that atheist Penn Jillette makes really candidly in this video.

To put it simply, most [religious people] don’t live their lives as if they absolutely believed in the words their religious texts profess. For example, if I truly believed in the Christian God, with absolute certainty, I would live my life in a way consistent with that.

I'm curious what he means by this. If he means living a "good life", that is not the description the Bible seems to describe (Old and New Testament). The Christian life is one of repentance, sin, growth, hardship, joy, etc. And for that, I have witnessed many living that life. Which I don't think this writer gets:

Most religions assert that God is watching our actions even when others aren’t watching. If this were true, my inner economist would tell me that people would avoid displeasing God at all costs.

Now to respond to Justin's blockquote. I think the opposite is true. When people's lives are on the line, we see more religious conversion than abandonment. It doesn't seem to me that this person knows many Christians. I think most I know (let's say 90%), my self included, would not waiver. The biggest belief I am personally sure of is the grace of Jesus. I know of no other way to explain my own failures and my own triumphs. The rest of Biblical doctrine is more malleable. For example I now go to a church that practice believers baptism, which I'm not convinced of. I go to a church that doesn't believe in predestination, which I am convinced of. But I still find myself connected our surety in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

Proof of Gmail's Superiority

2012-01-15T10:28:00.000-05:00

Working for the school system means sometimes I have to deal with Microsoft Outlook. Here's proof that Gmail is better for you:

We carried out a field study of 345 long-term users who conducted over 85,000 refinding actions. Our data support opportunistic access. People who create complex folders indeed rely on these for retrieval, but these preparatory behaviors are inefficient and do not improve retrieval success. In contrast, both search and threading promote more effective finding.

Yet the school system still blocks all Gmail access.

No One's In Control

2012-01-14T18:15:00.001-05:00

Everybody's favorite conservative, David Brooks, on Ron Paul (and really the Tea Party):

I sympathize with their sense that they have lost control of their country. That doesn’t mean that the people who have control are operating in some dark room in the Federal Reserve Building. The fact is nobody really has control. Not even Obama or Bernanke. That’s what’s nice about this place.

Via Justin Scott's Big Find.

Yawning as an Empathy-O-Meter

2012-01-13T23:30:00.000-05:00

just try not to

A friend recently shared a CBS News segment on the sociometer, which measures a person's charisma. But what if you want to measure or improve empathy? Here's an interesting way to tell:

A popular theory for how yawns spread is that they automatically engage the empathy systems in our brains. Consistent with this, past research found that children with autism, some of whom have difficulty empathising, are immune to the contagious effects of yawns.

Now Ivan Norscia and Elisabetta Palagi have developed this line of enquiry, showing that we're more likely to catch a yawn from relatives than acquaintances, and more likely to catch them from acquaintances than strangers - presumably because we have more empathy for people with whom we're emotionally intimate.

Similar to touching, it seems our brain has many ways to force us to empathize.

Money Can't Buy You Votes

2012-01-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

With the Republican primaries dominating the news these days, it's worth taking a look at. But unlike most reporting which feels more like sports commentary based on either hunches or the obvious, the boys at Freakonomics ask an important and interesting question: Does Money Really Buy Elections?:

When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.

So even though I'm a big supporter of publishing who gets what money from where, what I thought in 2008 and 2010 still stands. Campaign donations are like voting, they are a way to show your support, but they don't matter much.

Worthwhile Sentences on Relationships

2012-01-12T11:01:00.000-05:00

From Justin Landwehr: "Maybe I don’t want to care about impressing you, but I sure as hell want you to care about impressing me"

From economist Al Roth: "Let’s just say that marriage is a dynamic game that you play over a lifetime."

From the Simple Dollar: "The trick to a good presentation is to realize that the audience mostly just wants for the presentation to be over so they can do other things"

From ~~Leela Turanga~~ Turanga Leela: "Society is never gonna make any progress until we all learn to pretend to like each other."

From ~~Anna~~ Jonathan Franzen: “Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are.”

Difference Between Conservative and Liberal

2012-01-11T22:50:00.000-05:00

A while back I did a two part series on Why I'll Never Vote for a Democrat (because big government has done more horrible things than big business) and Why I'll Never Vote for a Republican (because most change in American history has been good). Though I'll probably eventually vote for both parties (if I vote at all), I have very little patience for the talking points of each (and so do about 30% of Americans). But I talk a lot about political parties and especially political ideology, so I think it's important to put down specifically what I mean when I use the words conservative and liberal (full disclosure I claim to be a libertarian, but most see me as a conservative) .

As I've mentioned before, the two words are used so much and so differently that they have almost lost meaning. At the heart of each word is their definition. Conservatives literally want to conserve. They want to keep things the way they are (or if they're lucky bring them back to where they were). Traditional is praised. Change is pessimistically feared. Liberals literally want liberty. But by liberty they mean freedom to live the life one desires (freedom from harmful controlling forces). The future is praised. Change is optimistically pursued.

But this all gets confused when looked at within a nation (especially one as unique as the United States). Our Founding Fathers were a mix of Conservatives (like the architect of our central banking system Alexander Hamilton) and Liberals (like the ardent freedom fighter Thomas Jefferson). But even these men would not fit into our modern usages of the words. I doubt Alexander Hamilton would consistently support (or could even imagine) the amount of government regulation we have today. And I doubt Thomas Jefferson would consistently support (or could even imagine) the level of personal freedom we each have with the internet, automatic machine guns, and international connectivity. And if you look back in time and support either of these two, it is by its nature Conservative.

So how can we accurately measure relative terms that change based on time, geographies, and issue? I suggest looking to at how we order from menus. A Conservative, who by nature expects future uncertainty to be worse than past certainty, will order what they always order. In my case, bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries. A Liberal, who by nature expects future uncertainty to be an improvement on past certainty, will order something new. In my case, bacon cheeseburger with a side of seasoned fries. Well, I guess by my example you know where my heart is. I don't do well with change.

Major Problem with the Gold Standard

2012-01-10T22:31:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul is back and so are his calls for the gold standard. I've talked before that even though gold is the best element for exchange, it still can be gotten rid of, so has similar problems of a fiat standard. However, Tyler Cowen (the only person with his own label on my blog) thinks it has more foundational problems:

The most fundamental argument against a gold standard is that when the relative price of gold is go up, that creates deflationary pressures on the general price level, thereby harming output and employment. There is also the potential for radically high inflation through gold, though today that seems like less a problem than it was in the seventeenth century.?

Why put your economy at the mercy of these essentially random forces? I believe the 19th century was a relatively good time to have had a gold standard, but the last twenty years, with their rising commodity prices, would have been an especially bad time. When it comes to the next twenty years, who knows?

Whether or not there is “enough gold,” and there always will be at some price, the transition to a gold standard still involves the likelihood of major price level shocks, if only because the transition itself involves a repricing of gold. A gold standard, by the way, is still compatible with plenty of state intervention.

I Don't Want to Buy Anything

2012-01-09T23:53:00.003-05:00

Loyal reader Free Spirit recently asked how the transition has been to my new smart phone. I'd break my use down to 25% email reading, 25% blog reading, 25% gps, and 25% other (camera, games, social networking, calculator, flashlight etc). Mostly things I was already doing right when I got home, but now I can do them on the go, in the line, and on the toilet.

But the biggest change has been my purchasing satisfaction. In the last month I've bought the two things I've been researching and reading about for almost 4 years, a smart phone and a nice TV. And since I've bought both I literally haven't wanted much else. I recently realized that if my income went up $50,000 I'm not sure what more I would buy. Unless you can tell me some thing I'm missing...

Emptying the Bottle: Early January '12 Links

2012-01-09T14:59:00.000-05:00

Here is the best of what I've shared on Twitter recently:

Will our grandchildren be totally weirded out that shots used to hurt [audio]?
What Washington crossing the Delaware really looked like.
My career has a purpose! School raises IQ!
Do you park to get there or park yo leave?
The greatest creation of global capitalism or I, cheeseburger.
The human transformer [video].
How the weather affects us.
20GB in 30 years via Justin Scott.
Role of charisma in politics [video] via Justin Wehr.
There really are devices that can increase penis size.
Sad thought, cognitive decline starts at 45 (earlier).
Soap opera's freedom, gay candidate, justified Japanese internment and more!

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Why Losing Weight is So Hard

2012-01-08T23:52:00.002-05:00

Because your body fights it:

A full year after significant weight loss, these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.

This is why it's important to be active and never gain the weight. But that's hard.

The Alien Life Letdown

2012-01-07T23:38:00.000-05:00

For the longest time it seemed obvious to me that alien life did not exist. Extraterrestrial life seems important enough to have either science or religion saying something clear about it. Then it occurred to me: what if alien life isn't a big deal? What if life on other planets exists, but it's just some simple cell or bacterial life? Or maybe if we're lucky, it's grass. Alien grass, that would be, well, something.

You Can't Multitask, But You Can Divide Your Attention

2012-01-03T22:59:00.000-05:00

One thing I've noticed as I simultaneously entered the world of smart phones and texting is the impossibility of multitasking. Something else I've noticed is the possibility of dividing your attention. There is a difference. Multitasking implies the ability to do more than one thing at a time as well as you would do it by itself. This has been shown to be not possible. When ever you do a task, your brain puts a certain percentage of it's effort towards it. For example, let's say normal driving requires 75% of your brain and texting requires 50%. That means when you do both, you are really doing neither very well. Oprah agrees.

However, I believe it is possible to divide your attention. That is, to do two tasks that require very little percentage of your brain. For example bad TV, which I estimate to require about 35% of your attention, and playing Pocket Tanks on my iPhone, which requires about 25%. I can easily do both of these tasks, even counting for the deadweight loss percentage probably required to switch between the two. So be careful not to overload your brain, but also because not to waste those valuable percentage points.

Diversified New Year's Resolutions, 2012 Edition

2012-01-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

For 2010 and 2011 I made several New Year's Resolutions. Both years I was only halfway successful. But as I was sitting down evaluating my past goals I noticed something. They haven't really changed. Here they are, originally from December 30, 2009:

1) Moderate exercise for 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week. From what I have read this is the minimum time needed to remain nominally healthy. Hopefully I will work my way up from here, but it's good to start small.

2) Drink 0-1/2 a soft drink daily in my home. Again, the plan is to work down to zero, but there's a good chance I'm addicted to caffeine.

3) Read the Bible every weekday. Not many exact parameters on this one yet, but I would like to open and read a portion of the Bible 5 days a week. I claim to believe it's valuable, but my actions say otherwise. (here's the blog I intend to keep up)

4) Pray regularly. Same details as the previous one.

5) Allow my wife to pick one for me. She knows my flaws better than anyone and I trust her more than anyone. Who better to help me improve? (she choose for me to do 10 minutes of house cleaning a day)

And this year I'd like to add one more: 6) Be on time. I've come to the conclusion that in order to be on time for everything you have to be early for most things. And thanks to my new smart phone I'll have something to do while I'm waiting.

Oh and just to be sure I don't feel like I've accomplished anything by posting this, assume I've failed.

How to Make a Twentysomething Have a Midlife Crisis

2011-12-31T13:07:00.000-05:00

Read my old post about how our perception of time changes then have them read this:

We all know that time seems to speed up as we grow older - but according to studies at the University of Cincinnati in the 1970's, this effect is so pronounced that if you're 20 today, you're already halfway through life, in terms of your subjective experience of how time passes, even if you live until you're 80. And if you're 40 - again, assuming you live to be 80 - your life is 71% per cent over. Basically, if you're older than about 30, you're almost dead.

Happy New Years...

Alchemy Improv Comedy with Stories from Chris White

2011-12-30T09:28:00.001-05:00

Every so often I like to post a video of a different kind of improv show I've been doing. Here are two examples from my old college group (and here's another I haven't posted called Snakes on a Stage that is a must see). Here was a Harold and Two-person show from my days at the DSI Comedy Theater. And here's one from a team I coached there.

Now here's one of the first shows from Alchemy Improv Comedy, the company I run out of Greenville, SC:

Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

Worthwhile Sentences on Warfare

2011-12-28T19:05:00.001-05:00

In honor of the end of American direct involvement in Iraq.

From NYT's Nicholas Kristof: "When the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson discussed on television whether the 9/11 attacks were God’s punishment on feminists, gays and secularists, God should have sued them for defamation."

From a bounty hunter: "God made man but samuel colt made them equal."

From The Daily Beast's Jesse Ellison: "In fact, it is the high victimization rate of female soldiers—women in the armed forces are now more likely to be assaulted by a fellow soldier than killed in combat—that has helped cast light on men assaulting other men."

From Ohio State political scientist John Mueller: "Your chance of dying in a bathtub is about one in a million, and from terrorism is about one in 3.5 million"

Holiday Card from a Reader

2011-12-26T23:20:00.000-05:00

By listening to my holiday advice on getting people exactly what they ask for he got me just what I asked for. From Justin from here.

Avoiding Xmas Deadweight Loss, Part VI

2011-12-25T20:17:00.000-05:00

Okay, last one (for this year at least):

You’ve found that perfect, pricey gift for your significant other. Now, you decide to pick up a little something else. But wait! The second smaller gift can actually take away from the powerful impression of gift number 1. That’s according to an analysis in the Journal of Consumer Research. [Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen M. Garcia and Norbert Schwarz, The Presenter’s Paradox]

The researchers call it the “presenter’s paradox.” The person presenting the gifts thinks more is better. But the receiver unconsciously averages the two – so a cheaper addition makes the bigger gift seem, surprisingly, cheaper itself.

The researchers evaluated seven test situations. In one, subjects were asked to assign a value for a gift iPod. Others were asked to value an iPod plus a free mp3. The participants assigned a significantly higher value on just the iPod.

And this occurs in other facets of life. Participants in another trial were asked to rate the severity of a littering punishment. And they rated a fine of $750 as a more severe punishment than a fine of the same $750 fine plus two hours of community service.

So, to avoid the averaging effect, keep it simple with gifts. It’s the thought that counts. The one thought.

Emptying the Bottle: Late December '11 Links

2011-12-24T21:15:00.000-05:00

Here is the best of what I've shared on Twitter recently:

Tyler Cowen on Freakonomics on why American food is "so bad".
99designs.com, an awesome way to get design work done.
There are no mistakes in the bandstand (and in improv) [video].
Creativity related to rule breaking [audio].
Roman Empire more equal than modern day United States.
Not surprisingly, don't give cash for Christmas. Exception?
Why are chili peppers spicy? To protect against fungus [audio].
Long, but good old (1928) essay on the implications on animal sizes.
College football victories = worse grades [video].
How Martin Luther went viral using the printing press.
How to fool people into thinking you like their gift.
Scrooge was related to Adam Smith.
Ron Paul literally puts his money where his mouth is [video].
How retailers trick you into buying more [video].

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Avoiding Xmas Deadweight Loss, Part V

2011-12-24T00:14:00.000-05:00

Just in case you haven't finished up your shopping yet, here's some more holiday saving (ruining?) advice on gift giving:

my first guideline for efficient giving: Gift-giving should be redistributive. Reciprocity is a lovely sentiment, but the holidays are an excellent time to rebalance the overall family or friend group portfolio in favor of its needier members.

Not sure if I agree with the desirability of that, but I think it is definitely true. Here's another:

When you step outside the circle of things you know for sure your gift-getter likes, you risk creating a massive deadweight loss. (You give her a ticket to Las Vegas, without knowing that she hates gambling.) But with the greater risk comes a greater potential reward.

And once you've decided to give a gift, you should give an experience:

In particular, people consistently overrate the extent to which money in general and material possessions in particular will make them happy, underweighting interpersonal relationships and new experiences in the process. So try to give your loved ones the opportunity to go do something new, ideally with other people.

Here's part one, two, three, and four of the series.

Legality of Santa Clause

2011-12-23T23:59:00.000-05:00

Santa's not real. If you're reading this and you didn't know that, I'm sorry. In fact, if you're reading at all and you didn't know that, I'm very sorry. But if Santa was real, would he be an international criminal?:

I. Trespass and Consent

At first glance it might seem that Santa Claus is liable in tort and criminal law for trespass, but the homeowner’s consent negates both charges. Sending letters to Santa, hanging stockings with care, setting out milk and cookies, and the like are all clear manifestations of consent for Santa Claus to enter one’s home and deposit presents (or coal, as the case may be). Indeed I suspect it would be quite difficult to find someone who received a present from Santa Claus yet could honestly claim that he or she did not consent to its delivery.

II. Airspace Restrictions

Another potential problem with Santa, as with many superheroes, is the issue of air travel regulations. In Santa’s case however, the fact that he is tracked by NORAD suggests that he has clearance from the US and Canadian militaries to travel through US and Canadian airspace essentially unrestricted.

III. Customs and Immigration

Santa may be cleared to travel through US and Canadian airspace, but what about entering the countries in the first place? As it turns out, Canada has extended Canadian citizenship to Santa Claus, so the answer is trivial for Santa’s travels through Canada. Furthermore, as a Canadian citizen his entry into the US is fairly straightforward because he’ll only be in the country for a few hours; there is no need for a special visa. One brief stop at a border crossing when he enters the US is all he needs. If he can visit millions of homes around the world in one night, that small delay is unlikely to present a problem.

Customs is a bit trickier as Santa Claus ordinarily would have quite a lot to declare. It seems clear, though, that Santa does not actually physically possess all of the presents to be delivered in his sleigh (obviously that would be impossible!). Instead his sack of toys functions as a kind of teleportation device, allowing him to pull out presents as needed, as depicted in this well-known documentary. That would seem to neatly skirt the problem of filling out the world’s longest customs form.

Though he may be breaking some European labor laws:

Difference Between Humans and Animals, Part XXVIII

2011-12-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

Going back to part 1 of this series there is a difference in the way humans and animals learn. But perhaps the biggest difference isn't learning, but teaching:

I know this may come as a surprise, but it does so because we tend to mix up teaching and learning. A young chimpanzee can learn how to smash nuts on a rock by watching an older chimpanzee in action. And when she grows up, her own children can learn by watching her. But in these situations, the students are on their own. They have to watch an action and try to tease apart the underlying rules.

The article goes on to give some possible exceptions, but it's interesting to think I could be the missing link.

The Experience Bank

2011-12-19T11:52:00.000-05:00

Everything either brings net positive emotions (happy) or negative emotions (sad). They also bring varying amounts of happiness or sadness. For example, the night I got engaged was one of the happiest days of my life. Let's just label that 100 (happiness) points. My recent move on the other hand, has been fairly difficult. Let's label that -25 (sadness) points. Positive experiences add a finite amount to our life satisfaction and negative ones subtract a finite amount from it. The balance of those events are the measure of how we feel about our lives.

Although this seems obvious there are some interesting implications when you start to consider that experiences, like money, can be borrowed. Upcoming events, both and good and bad, have expectations. Those feelings are you taking some of those points out before they are earned. Here are three scenarios:

Neutral: Imagine you have a holiday coming up. The entire week before you imagine all the great experiences you are going to have. When the day arrives, it goes exactly how you thought it would. But when things go exactly like we think, even when they are great, we aren't ecstatic. It's because we consumed a lot of the positive happiness points before the event even happened. We borrowed from future happiness. This Louis C.K. bit describes it perfectly.

Deficit: But like real debt, sometimes we can predict our future earnings incorrectly. Imagine that same holiday is coming up and we have the same expectations. But nothing happens. No one shows up to your get together. No one calls. Nothing. Then you are sad. You're not sad because nothing special happened. Nothing special happens all the time. You're sad because all week you borrowed from the experience bank and your Christmas bonus didn't come.

Surplus: Now imagine a third scenario. The holidays are coming up, but you have no expectations of fun. All week you dread the day because you just know it is going to be miserable. Then suddenly all your friends and family arrive for some amazing holiday fun. You explode with joy. You hadn't consumed any of the experience value until that very moment and now you get to gorge.

So which situation is best?Neutral account? Deficit account? Surplus account? Well clearly the deficit is worst. No one likes to be let down. Except I see a lot of people who live their life like this. They have unrealistic expectations for the future. They live rich in the present, but will suffer in the future. A surplus account also has it's problems. Sure you get the explosion of joy when things turn out great, but in the meantime you are miserable.

That why I personally prefer a neutral account. You get to spread out the joy (or pain) of events over a long period of time. It's not about being optimistic or pessimistic. It's about being right. It's giving the gift people want for Christmas is best, even if you were able to accurately guess what they wanted. And why having a loved one die suddenly is worse than having them die slowly (unless they die too slowly which creates a whole different experience). This is what happened with my recent life transition. The experience itself wasn't that terrible. I had just not expected my life to ever get worse. I had been borrowing from my "imaginary eternal spiral upward, into a bigger and better future".

But here's the kicker. I started this post assuming my preference was the right answer. But I broke one of my own presuppositions that people have wildly different preferences. It turns out some people do like to play the lottery. Conversely, other people fear change so much they would rather be a little more sad in the present than ever be really sad in the future. I expect that there are different discount rates for happiness like there are for money. Perhaps being experientially patient results in more wealth just like being economically patient results in more real wealth. I know I often tend towards preferring the present too much. So feel free to get your hopes up or down, just know there is no so such thing as a free hope.